THE COLONIAL AGE OF NEW ENGLAND: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED AT THE CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN OF IPSWICH, MASS., AUGUST 16, 1834 By Rufus Choate It is a fact which a native of this old, fertile, and beautiful town may learn with pleasure, but without surprise, that it was always the most fertile or among the most fertile and most beautiful portions of the coast of New England. John Smith, who in 1614 explored that coast from Penobscot to Cape Cod, admires and praises “the many rising hills of Agawam/’ whose tops and descents are grown over with numerous corn-fields and delightful groves, the island to the east, with its “fair high woods of mulberry trees,” and the luxuriant growth of oaks, pines, and walnuts, “which make the place,” he says, “an excellent habitation”; while the Pilgrim Fathers in December, 1620, when deliberating on the choice of a spot for their settlement, some of them “urged greatly to Anguam or Angoam, a place twenty leagues off to the northward, which they heard to be an excellent harbor for ships, better ground, and better fishing.” As early as January, 1632, the first governor of Massachusetts, John Winthrop, declared Agawam to be “the best place for tillage and cattle in the land;” others described its great meadows, marshes, and plain ploughing grounds; and that the government of the infant colony, Massachusetts, at the time resolved that it should be occupied forthwith by a sort of garrison, in advance and in anticipation of its more formal and numerous settlement, for the express purpose of keeping so choice a spot out of the hands of the French. In March, 1633, accordingly, there was sent hither a company of thirteen men to acquire and to preserve rather for the future than the present uses of the Colony, as much as they might of that fair variety of hill, plain, wood, meadow, marsh, and sea-shore, whose fame had spread so widely. The leader of the little band was John Winthrop, the son of the Governor. 1
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